Data Center Engineer

Application Deadline: December 17, 2026

Available locations:

• Austin
• Atlanta
• Seattle
• Washington DC
• Denver

About the department

In this role, you will be focused on maintaining the Cloudflare global network. You'll work closely with Cloudflare’s SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) team, Network Engineering team, Network Deployment Engineering team and with various vendors and partners (including hardware vendors, datacenter and network providers, and ISPs) to maintain and improve our global infrastructure. You will further be responsible for the development and implementation of consistent processes and visibility measurements for consistent and effective management of our infrastructure. This is a highly visible position that requires deep technical understanding of datacenter infrastructure, networking (physical), and basic experience with data analysis and project management.

To be successful in this position, you should have excellent technical skills, communication skills, and be able to navigate a range of challenges and constraints (e.g. schedule adherence, time zones, and cultures). You will have the opportunity to (literally) build a faster, safer Internet for our millions of users and the billions of web surfers that visit their sites each month.

Who you are

You will thrive in a hypergrowth engineering environment and be self driven with a keen attention to detail. You will come with a deep technical understanding of Data Center colocation environments, network architecture and server technologies. You will be used to working through partners to support infrastructure delivery to a number of remote locations. You will have had experience managing operational environments, and used to developing new approaches to improve delivery efficiency or operational stability.

What you'll do

• Collaborating with internal teams (Infrastructure, Network Engineering and SRE). Create documentation and manage remote contractors to complete datacenter tasks, working with hardware manufacturers, datacenter and network providers, logistics partners and other service providers in support of our 330+ cities and 125+ countries
• Maintain Data Center environment operational availability
• Leverage AI tools to automate repetitive operational tasks, accelerate documentation, and speed up troubleshooting and root-cause analysis
• Creating and maintaining documentation, plans, SOP’s, MOP’s etc.
• Support and configure network infrastructure where required
• Providing feedback to internal teams to support internal tools and external vendor partnerships

Required Experience

• Experience with Juniper, Cisco and DWDM network equipment
• Minimum of 4 years experience of Linux systems administration
• Experience managing and instructing remote contractors
• Familiarity with work required to stand up infrastructure in remote colocation facilities
• Experience running and improving operational processes, including automation tooling, in a rapidly changing environment
• Familiarity with day-to-day tasks and projects common to Data Center Operations (deployment, migration, decommissioning etc.)
• Comfortable handling basic program management responsibilities (prioritization, planning, scheduling, status reporting) such as JIRA
• Participate in a shared on-call rotation to maintain 24×7 operational availability of the global network.

Other Responsibilities May Include

• Aggressively seek opportunities to introduce cutting-edge technology and automation solutions that are effective, efficient and scalable in order to improve our ability to deploy and maintain our global infrastructure
• Assist with the definition, documentation and implementation of consistent processes across all region
• Limited travel

Examples of desirable skills, knowledge and experience

• Bachelor’s degree; technical background in engineering, computer science, or MIS
• Direct experience executing on complex data center/infrastructure projects
• Previous experience installing / maintaining data center (and other IT) infrastructure and DCIM tools
• Experience running and improving operational processes in a rapidly changing environment
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and interpersonal skills
• Must be proactive with proven ability to learn fast and execute on multiple tasks simultaneously
• Ability to manage Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets
• Comfortable handling basic program management responsibilities (prioritization, planning, scheduling, status reporting) such as JIRA
• Must be a team player

Bonus Points

• Multi-lingual; experience working with infrastructure in multiple countries
• Comfortable with remote “lights-out” and out-of-band access to data center resources
• Linux certifications (RHCSA etc.)
• Network certifications (CCNA, JNCIA or higher)
• Configuration management systems such as Saltstack, Chef, Puppet or Ansible
• Scripting or software development experience in Bash, Python or Go-lang
• Familiarity with load balancing and reverse proxies such as Nginx, Varnish, HAProxy, Apache
• Experience in working within a large scale SaaS vendor

Compensation

• Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

• For Washington D.C. Metro and Washington (Kirkland) based hires: Estimated annual salary of $120,000 - $165,000.

• For Colorado based hires: Estimated annual salary of $98,000 - $135,000

  Equity

  • This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare's equity plan.

  Benefits

  • Cloudflare offers a complete package of benefits and programs to support you and your family. Our benefits programs can help you pay health care expenses, support caregiving, build capital for the future and make life a little easier and fun! The below is a description of our benefits for employees in the United States, and benefits may vary for employees based outside the U.S.
  • Health & Welfare Benefits
  • Medical/Rx Insurance
  • Dental Insurance
  • Vision Insurance
  • Flexible Spending Accounts
  • Commuter Spending Accounts
  • Fertility & Family Forming Benefits
  • On-demand mental health support and Employee Assistance Program
  • Global Travel Medical Insurance
  • Financial Benefits
  • Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
  • Life & Accident Insurance
  • 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
  • Employee Stock Participation Plan
  • Time Off
  • Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
  • Leave programs, including parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave